I’m not sure I can say it better than the big man himself, so I left the intro to him this time!
This was a big request to fill, building a demigod from the game of Elden Ring and it took some discussion with the folks over on the Monster Monday Discord, but we settled on a level 18 build for Mohg, the Lord of Blood. With his telegraphed moves and focus on the bloodflame magic he has gained, I built him as a spellcaster. On the defensive side of things, he has a low Armor Class but Hit Points in between moderate and high. His attacks use a moderate bonus but only deal damage between low and moderate since I was somewhat beholden to the damage of the trident. However, his spell attacks and DCs are in between high and extreme, showing the focus of his design. His spells focus on blood, fire, and terror with boil blood being a particularly fun fit for his themes. However, none of the spells really fulfilled the nature of some of his abilities, leading to me to devise other methods to represent them.
While lacking a name, Mohg does have an effect that causes him to deal increased damage whenever he or his enemy takes hemorrhage. This hemorrhage effect is a single pop of damage in Elden Ring, but I favored representing it as persistent bleed damage in this iteration of the creature. Therefore, his Lord of Blood aura grants him a +4 status bonus on damage with his trident when he or another creature is bleed, which increases to moderate damage with that bonus. This ability also enhances his spells and has one final effect that I added later. Mohg took two tests to get right with the first being only three rounds as the party absolutely shredded this depraved demigod. As part of some sweeping defense buffs, I added an effect that grants some extra health to Mohg while victims bleed, keeping this as temporary health so that it doesn’t stacks with similar effects such as his vampiric spells.
As a way of spreading bleed, Mohg has Bloodboon, representing his ability of the same name that lights the ground ablaze and causes hemorrhage to build up. This creates hazardous terrain that can create bleed on a moderate Fortitude DC given its duration and triggering without any further actions from Mohg. There’s also his Bloodflame Talon, which includes a swipe that I sought to represent with a spell attack that deals moderate damage. As only a single action, that isn’t bad and there’s some icing on top as the claw marks detonate a round later. Obviously, most people are gonna move out of the way of this, which means the best use for this is to either use it against entrapped enemies, while in the area of allies that can limit movement, or when Mohg wants to force an enemy to reposition.
Mohg’s remaining abilities cover the classic practice of FromSoft games – the second phase of his boss fight. Throughout the first phase, Mohg will place marks on his targets, counting down as he does so. I represented this through the Ominous Mark ability, a single action so that he can do the countdown, but also designed to interact with the degree of success system of Pathfinder 2e. I kept this as a single action with an extreme DC since it initially doesn’t have any effect beyond just placing marks. Those marks come into play when he goes into his second phase with his Bloody Rite, renamed from Bloodboon Ritual to avoid confusion with his other Bloodboon ability. This is limited to triggering when he’s at half health or lower and it starts with an explosion of damage. Though with no marks, this deals absolutely dismal damage. A creature with one mark is taking damage as though this once per day ability had unlimited uses. Creatures with two marks take damage between a limited use and an unlimited use damage ability and then creatures with three marks start taking damage beyond that. This damage heals him as in actual healing, matching his health regen during the transition in game. This ability also grants him wings while setting his trident ablaze with bloodflame, which again has a chance of dealing bleed when they take that fire damage.
Pathfinder 2e:
Due to some of the nature of Pathfinder First Edition and its glut of spells, Mohg has a bit more spells with varying effectiveness. A large part of this was me trying to fill gaps after deciding I wanted his spellcasting to be based on a witch casting to reflect the Formless Mother as his patron. I tried to keep the focus on fire, fear, and the flaying of flesh but some other things crept in here and there. Lacking the three action system of PF2e, I designed Mark of Blood to work as a move action, allowing him to combine it with swipes using his Vital Swipe lean of feats to maximize his turn. Much of the rest of his kit follows a similar design process for the abilities found in 2e.
Pathfinder 1e:
Blue's D&D 5e:
An encounter hook is not enough for a character like Mohg who could actually serve as the boss for a campaign, likely one themed around his cult collecting power to help him achieve his goals. This could be a good campaign for using a relic system as other gods empower the heroes to stop this upstart deity
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